and the day ends...

a poem written while listening to Jay Malinowski's new solo album, the song "Santa Monica" specifically.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeju--BGgNk

lonely heartbeats, collected together,

each separated by a listening pause

once a handful, then a bowlful

and now an oceanful of soft reverbs

resounds against my ribcage

in an endless cycle of call to listen...

without hope for an answer

where is the hand that completed my world?

where is the touch that consumed my senses?

i'm all alone now, learning unwillingly,

that only my own two feet can carry me

that only my own two arms can hold me

that only my own is all that can be relied upon

in the end, i suppose,

it's the best one can ask for...

to have my hand be the hand i hold

Reviews

[Sweet_pale_cacophony]

Such wise words jennie...and this write is indeed gentle as the morning breeze..i love the first para..only you could write it that way....
but i just have to add this that no matter how much we say to oureselves that no matter what it is only i myself am my true friend...we still always do yearn for that other hand which would interlock with ours and complete us one day...

[Gandré]

This is a poem about a big loss, about losing a husband or a dear one, this is in western-style democracies an increasing phenomenon; there are lots of women, and older women who have survived their husbands, I had to think about this. This character is in grief. This poem is not uplifting but someone who is not in this state can learn compassion or empathy; I hope people learn more from this than repress empathy. It's free verse style poem, it's human, it's written from experience, it is also honest. It's pessimistic but there are people who can learn from this - it's people who did not learn to repress empathy earlier in their lives. The human state if s problem of numbers; naturally the human limit of relationships is about 180-200 people; once we go beyond those numbers, we become less human, we become hard and unsympathetic. We reach a point, where we have to ignore people's distress. And yet people are driven towards pessimistic poems, I think, it's self-consolation; for the creator it is, birds of a feather flock together, there are many unhappy or unbalanced people and they like to read about grief, the loneliness is shocking, especially in western societies, we didn't learn to deal with it yet. The human race took 200 000 years to become human and look what we've done in 100 years. We don't know what the limits are. It seems reasonable to recognize emotional states experienced by mourning humans, like grief, I like that I didn't find here remorse, there are 7 billion stories and we are still counting. I liked this poem a lot. (I didn't read your description. I don't do that, usually. So there is no influence.)

[R J Askew]

Ach, this is a sad one. I've read a lot about loneliness and solitude and always feel like an outsider looking in on something I don't quiet understand. Not because I am surrounded by people but because I seem to be naturally as ease being alone. But how wld I be if I were alone all the time? I don't know. I understand that there a lot more single households now. Divorce etc. I think the first verse is the most poetic with the next couple working through the consequences and arriving at a sensible solution. It seems odd that there are six billion of us, yet we can still be lonely, alone even. But such is life. We all need the right company I suppose. Maybe being alone is preferable to being in the wrong company. Thought I suppose there are some who wld say that even that was preferable to being alone. My feelings often stray towards misanthropy though, to longing fot total and perfect solitude and silence to think things through and listen to the universe as we are never truely alone in the universe thought we may think it.